461] , ASPECTS OF THE PLEBISCITE I63 



possible, we would have to accept perpetual strife and revo- 

 lution as the alternative. 



To what extent a two-thirds, three-fourths or a still 

 larger majority would eliminate the dangers of continued 

 demands for recognition by dissenting minorities, is a ques- 

 tion which permits of no definite answer. The only state- 

 ment that can be made with assurance is that nothing short 

 of an effective near-unanimity can give a satisfactory solu- 

 tion on a basis of a decision by direct or indirect popular 

 vote. Such an efifective near-unanimity may be defined as 

 a majority which, without any recourse to compulsor}' 

 methods, proves itself able to gain the expressed or tacit 

 consent of the minority to submit to the decision made. 



In the last decades the institution of option has, in the 

 cases of transfers of territories, frequently been applied in 

 order to overcome, as far as possible, the opposition of the 

 inhabitants, or of the element most hostile to the change of 

 allegiance enforced upon them. 



Bonfils and Rivier in France and Stoerk and Ullmann in 

 Germany, while refuting the principle of the plebiscite as 

 a practical means of overcoming the difficulties connected 

 with the cession of territorv', see the solution of this ques- 

 tion in the practice of giving the inhabitants of the terri- 

 tory the option of accepting the new enforced sovereignty 

 or of retaining their old allegiance.^^ In his Option und 

 Plehiscit, Stoerk gives an historical account of the prin- 

 ciple of option as practiced in the past. He begins his study 

 with a consideration of the right of emigration. In the 

 Peace of Augsburg of 1555 and in the Treaty of West- 

 phalia in 1648 the jus cmigrandi was granted to religious 

 dissenters. The Peace of Augsburg had established for the 

 German states the principle of the cuius regio, eius rcligio. 

 But the same peace treaty gave the Protestant population 

 the right of emigration in case they refused to return to the 

 Catholic faith, to be forced upon them by their princes. The 



2» Bonfils, no. 571; Rivier, vol. i, pp. 204-208; E. von Ullmann, 



Volkerrecht, Tubingen, 1908, p. 358. 



